


Scent of Napalm Flowers

by Weissnichtwo (LoudenSwain713)



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005), Brokeback Mountain - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Ennis not being dumb for once, Ennis's POV, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, On Both of their Parts, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protectiveness, Slow Burn, Tags Are Hard, Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23405572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoudenSwain713/pseuds/Weissnichtwo
Summary: “I might be back. If the army don’t get me.”The army gets Jack. It gets Ennis too.
Relationships: Ennis Del Mar/Jack Twist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41





	Scent of Napalm Flowers

Ennis stares at the letter in his hands, the stark GREETING standing out against the snow-white. It was just sitting there in the mailbox when he got back from work, all innocent and unassuming. No hint of the condemnation it contained inside its perfectly creased folds.

“Ennis? Ennis, where’re ya?” Alma asks, the door creaking on her way inside.

“In here,” but the sounds stick to his lips and it comes out more of a mumble.

“The Johnsons’re goin’-” she pauses, looking at her fiancé standing stock-still in the middle of his kitchen, gazing blankly at a sheet of paper. “Ennis, baby, are you okay?”

He starts at her words, looking up and blinking slowly as if he's forgotten where exactly he was standing. “Draft letter came,” he says, waving the letter with his left hand, as if that’ll shake out all the words, fearful and turbulent, that are lodged in his throat. It doesn’t.

Alma’s hands fly to her mouth, eyes widening and watering. “Oh, Ennis. Baby, what’re you gonna do?”

He shrugs, averting his gaze. “Go down t’ Fort Ord before Friday. Guess that’s in California.” He had already thought on this before Alma arrived. It’s the only thing to do.

“California? Why, that’s hours and hours away, Ennis! How’m I gonna see you?”

He doesn’t look at her, jaw clenched. “C’n call me, I s’pose.”

Alma closes her eyes, arms crossed tight and defensive across herself. A drop of saline hits her shirt.

Ennis makes no motion to catch her tears, but he sighs, setting the letter down on the kitchen table. He wraps her in his arms, her body tucked into his chest. “Write th’ number down, ‘case I ferget. I’ll call ya.”

They stand in that kitchen a long time, swaying back and forth, not saying another word to one another.

The days pass quickly, too quickly, and all of a sudden Ennis is loading his tattered suitcase into the battered truck beside him and driving south towards California. The weather’s mild, and the sky is dotted with clouds, even as early in the day as it is. It would be pleasant if not for the image of Alma, small and sad, watching him leave. Without warning, he’s hit by a memory from three months ago that leaves him gasping for air.

He was standing on a street corner, dust swirling around his boots, dust stirred up by a pickup that was pulling onto the highway. Through the rear windshield, he could see a dark head of hair, and, for a moment, he thought he saw a flash of a mirror, bright against the sun, and blue eyes, the sort of shade that spoke of clear summer skies and lakes so reflective you couldn’t tell what’s air or water. As he watched, the pickup and the man inside it grew smaller and smaller ‘til he couldn’t see it any more. Another moment and the truck was gone, the dust settling in its wake. Like it’d never been there in the first place.

By the time he comes to, the memory of that last day in Signal is tucked away again, and Alma is naught but a speck in his rearview mirror. He shakes his head, tightening his grip on the steering wheel and shifting in his seat. A full day’s drive is ahead of him, long and stagnant already. He turns up the radio. “Deep Purple” plays, a harmonica wheezing intermittently. He turns the radio back down.

Ennis merges onto I-80 just east of Evanston. It’s just now noon, but a part of him sags from exhaustion. Or maybe dread. He may’ve not ever owned a TV, but they give a pretty decent overview of the war on KVOW. Tensions are rising in Vietnam; just a day or so earlier, the president of South Vietnam was assassinated. It’s clear that the conflict isn’t about to calm down anytime soon. 

He sighs, wiping his hands on his pant legs. As each mile passes, his gut cramps more and more. What the hell was he thinking? He could’ve filed for deferment, married Alma early. Anything, he should’ve done anything other than get in this truck and drive to California. Who knows where the war will be in six months, a year? Who knows what danger awaits in Vietnam? Hell, he could’ve said he’s-

The truck accelerates as his body jerks. He’s _not_. It was a one-shot thing, no reason to dwell on it. He was just frustrated, missin’ Alma, didn’t mean nothing. It didn’t.

Ennis turns on the radio again.

Driving through the Sierra Nevada mountains, the landscape is so reminiscent of the Bighorns that it causes a physical pain in his hand. He clenches his fist but immediately opens it. The movement, along with the scenery, dredges up memories. They’re too fresh to have scarred; the thought of them is stinging and raw. The bruise would have healed months ago, and Ennis acknowledges this with the same resignation as clothes in a washing machine: slamming against walls, tumbling against each other, wrung out, red bleeding into white, unwanted pink.

Regret, first and foremost. Ennis has never really been physically violent, not to another person. He’s felt the urge, the sparking anger, but he’s always, _always_ held it back. Of course, the one time he let go, he hurt Jack. It’s unforgivable, and Ennis nearly pulls over to the side of the road, bile thick on his tongue. But the nausea subsides, and he finds himself able to continue driving.

Deeper, there’s the shame. A rodeo fuckup like Jack, especially one with his inclinations, doesn’t deserve his regret. Why can’t he just be happy with Alma, a sweet girl that wants nothing more than to marry him, raise his children? The thought should make him happy, and a part of it does: Ennis, recently, has felt the pull of fatherhood, noticing the children on street corners, smiling at their antics. The thought of raising a kid, a little baby girl, protecting her and teaching her, it’s more appealing than Ennis would like to admit. But when he looks up into the face of the other person holding his daughter’s hand, it’s not Alma he sees there,

Lastly, and strongest, is the rage, stretching spindle-like to a multitude of people. Himself, for giving in: to Jack that night on the mountain, to Alma and her doe-eyed, guiding questions, to his father and the scene forever embedded on the insides of his eyelids. Alma, for not being enough, for not being strong enough, appealing enough. Jack, for getting in his truck and letting Ennis walk away, head down. Why didn’t he stop him then? Jack, usually so talkative, said nothing. Why?

Ennis knows why. His knuckles burn in the place they struck Jack. His eyes too, at the sight-memory of Jack strewn on the ground, slumped over from the force of his punch. Or maybe that’s just the exhaustion, heaped high on his limbs and mind, dragging him towards sleep. But he cannot sleep; if he sleeps, he dreams. So the truck continues its path through the mountains, speed no different than before, steady and unwavering. The man inside, however, is not as constant as this visage suggests.

As he approaches the coast, Ennis can taste the water on his tongue, calling him irrationally to the seaside. He’s never been, of course. Wyoming is nothing but plains, green-brown grasses, pale dirt peeking through. The only real water he’s seen is Bear Lake, just across the border into Idaho. His mother had taken him when he was a boy, just barely on the edges of memory, fuzzy with sun and cool mud between his toes.

His father had barely been able to stand it, he remembers that. Edward Del Mar couldn’t stand large crowds, especially the kind of crowds that flocked to beaches in the summertime. Of course, Ennis has never been the type of man to enjoy large groups of people either, and as inheritances go, if that was the only thing he’d received from his father, that wouldn’t be the worst thing. But it isn’t. No, Ennis can feel the fire itching up his veins, anger at people thousands of miles away, anger at his brother for leaving him, anger, most irrationally, at Alma.

K.E. met his wife in the summer of 1962, and they married the following spring. Lisa was pretty, dark-haired, and Ennis could see what K.E. saw in her: she was just as talkative as his brother, funny, not afraid to laugh. With Lisa in his life, K.E. hadn’t hesitated to “encourage” Ennis to leave. That’s what had driven him to look for work, what had drawn him to Brokeback. Even now, it’s hard to wrap his head around. He couldn’t imagine kicking one of his closest relatives to the curb, not for Alma; his fiancée is quiet, bordering on meek, too small, not enough to hold onto at night. 

But he puts these thoughts, quiet waves of discontent lapping at his psyche, carefully away. The drive is beautiful, a whole country he’s never even dreamed of before, and it’s just enough to distract from the tumble of thoughts in his head.

Ennis pulls up to Fort Ord with a knot of nausea churning inside him. The bricked buildings, stretching row upon row across the valley, are too similar to cattle pens. As he parks the truck and hoists his bag over his shoulder, he knows with sudden and distinct clarity that he is not the rancher in this situation; he is the cow

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Kudos and comments are appreciated!


End file.
